J. S. Walker Associates Realtors

(ARA) - There's a spring frenzy going on at garden centers nationwide. If you're already dreading the idea of dealing with crowds, and the disappointment of not being able to find what you want, make this the year you get a head-start on everyone else.

Shop online at American Meadows.com, one of the largest and most respected suppliers of flower seeds, plants and bulbs in North America, and your plants will be delivered in time for spring planting. Best of all, you'll get them all -- bulbs and perennials at a significant discount. AmericanMeadows.com has a falling discount that begins at 50 percent off, then falls to 35 percent as spring approaches, then full price when spring is here.

Not sure what you're going to want to plant? The site can help you there, too. There's a wealth of information about spring planting, including a Quick Guide to flower bulbs that will tell you how to store your bulbs before planting, how to prepare them to go into the ground and how to care for them once planted.

The site also offers a good supply of bulbs available for purchase. The three most popular bulbs for spring, the gladiolis, dahlias and lilies, come in a wide variety of colors.

If you want to create towers of lavish color with almost no work at all, gladiolus bulbs are the way to go. You can use them to create instant clumps of color between other plants. Want a garden with a lot of interest, how about planting some dahlias! When they flower, multiple buds open into some of the flower kingdom's most spectacular blooms, some up to 10-inches across. Lilies are also extremely popular, and not just in the springtime. They add lavish color from late spring right into fall. They take almost no ground space, since you can pop the bulbs in between other plants, and have fabulous blooms above it all.

For those gardeners who want to go above and beyond the expected, American Meadows also carries specialty bulbs you won't find for sale anywhere else. The company is the exclusive Internet distributor of Biltmore Bulbs, cultivated by the garden staff at North Carolina's famous Biltmore Estate. Truly magnificent dahlias, unusually beautiful gladiolus, and of course, exquisite lilies are included in the select group, deemed fine enough to grow at Biltmore House... and now at your house, too.

The site also offers wild lilies for sale that range in color from shimmering white to brilliant pinks, orange and red; and all the perennials you can imagine, from A-to-Z.

Not only will shopping online save you a lot of hassle, but money too. Right now, the company is having a 35 percent off sale on all spring bulbs, perennials, ornamental grasses and ferns, berries and asparagus plants on the site; but you better act fast because it won't last long.

"The sooner you order, the more you'll save," says company President Ray Allen. "Right now we are able to get our bulbs directly from Holland, but there is a cutoff date, and once it arrives, no more plants will be shipped overseas. As supplies dwindle, prices will, of course, go up."